SITUATION

Now that the new BattlEye anti-cheat service has had its infrastructure tested successfully in version 1.44, we're ready for the next stage. On Dev-Branch you can try the game with full protection enabled, meaning the game has its shield up the entire time from launch to exit. You'll find a new page in the Launcher, where you can toggle the service on or off and see status messages. These changes and various multiplayer stability fixes are slated for update 1.46. We'll be taking a build snapshot this week, and aim to open a public Release Candidate branch on Friday or early next week. Stay tuned to our usual channels for details!

Publishing a scenario is easy. Publishing a fun, challenging and engaging scenario is another matter entirely. In addition to the design itself, here are a few tips to present your creation in a good way:

Go over the Mission Presentation documentation. Obviously you are free to use your own style, but there are several useful systems that can elevate your work with little effort. Configure the overview image and text, loading screen, standard cutscenes, in-game notifications and debriefing as you wish.

Avoid tag spam! The editor lets you specify tags that should make it easier for players to discover your work. Don't overdo it by selecting any tag that remotely fits the scenario. All this will do, is make the Workshop harder to search. In fact, we're considering restricting tags in some way in the near future. Pick the key aspects that fit your creation to prevent subscriber confusion. Learn more here.

Define dependencies. You can notify users of Required DLC and / or other Required (Workshop) Items. At the moment these are soft dependencies that are not handled by the game automatically, but this is an area our Launcher team is focusing on now. There is also an issue with not listing all DLC at the moment. It has been reported to Steam.

Occasionally the team has to suffer some patriotic tendencies from its Dutch duo. The weekly photo shows Encoding Lead Petr KolĂˇř having been placed under the spell of some of the finest comfort food from the Netherlands. Our weapons of choice: pindakaas (peanut butter), stroopwafel (caramel syrup waffle) and pepermunt (peppermint). We can confirm they have made several great things happen for Arma 3 thus far!

OPERATIONS

We're in full production for the new Expansion terrain, and there is an opportunity for some of you to contribute. We want to make this terrain truly special, with lots of great places to explore. Achieving this requires a lot of art assets to be produced. We've decided to ask a few Arma modders for assistance via paid external contract work. More art capacity means more unique locations can be created. Your focus would be on creating buildings and other structures as Producer LukĂˇĹˇ VeselĂ˝ describes on the forums. Visit the careers page for further information. We look forward to working with you to make this next huge canvas for Arma 3 awesomely detailed.

Sometimes we have opportunities to go on field trips for our games. Last week, a small delegation attended the IDET fair in Brno, Senior Designer VladimĂ­r Hynek among them. In this case we were not researching specific technologies, but rather letting ourselves get inspired for future work on assets, features and games. It helps our designers to spend some time in fully-featured training simulators, to hold weapon systems, to see procedures in action and to speak with the people using defense and security tech in the field.

In the pursuit of optimization, Programmer Richard Biely and Designer JiřĂ­ Wainar have been working on engine-supported remote execution of script code. This was already possible via a scripted framework powered by function BIS_fnc_MP. However, using this framework results in a lot of overhead and data transfer. There now exist two new script commands on Dev-Branch : remoteExec and remoteExecCall. These will make it possible to achieve the same functionality via engine code, making it faster, using less traffic, handling Join-In-Progress better, and allowing us to increase security in the future. You can either use these commands on your own, or keep using BIS_fnc_MP. Its parameters and usage will remain the same, but it will use these new commands to do its heavy-lifting.

SITUATION

It is actually kind of tricky to give you a useful overview of our current situation. As we reported over the last couple of weeks, we find ourselves in the period between a major release (Marksmen DLC) and the start of full team production on the next big thing (Expansion). That does not mean the team is relaxing. More network messaging optimizations have found their way to Dev-Branch. We're also testing a potential fix for the server instabilities on the profiling branch. And a test plan for fully switching on the enhanced BattlEye protection is being drawn up. Until we can share with you our future plans, enjoy the game, and do please give some love to your favorite modders! #modlove2015

INTELLIGENCE

Join us and ModDB in celebrating Mod Appreciation Week! Ever since the early days of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, whose demo scenario was HEX-edited into entirely new missions, our games have had a great mod community. From small creative experiments to massively successful total conversions, there has always existed a symbiotic relationship between the vanilla platform and the mods based on it. This has benefited us by expanding the reach of our games, it has helped modders to be creators and start development careers, and of course, it has provided fun for millions of players. We'll be honest; there are darker sides to modding as well, but these dwindle in comparison to the benefits. We hope to be able to better support modders in the coming years, with enriched documentation, better tools, more samples, and other endeavors that improve discoverability and fair compensation.

So, what can you do to help modders this week? Just share your appreciation! Find links to your favorite mods and tell them why they rock using #modlove2015 on social media channels.

The recent Steam Free Weekend brought in a good batch of new recruits. We recommend you give the Bootcamp mini campaign episode a chance. You can quite comfortably finish it in one play session lasting around 1-1.5 hours. For beginners, the episode is a fun starting point, which familiarizes you with the basics of movement, (map) navigation, tasks and combat. Tip: stick with your leader! But there are reasons for veterans to play the episode as well; it is a prelude to the events in the main campaign. Experience how the relationships between NATO forces, 'Greenbacks' and CSAT develop, and see a few known faces such as Colonel Andrew MacKinnon's.

The "First Deployment" achievement is awarded after simply finishing the episode. You can access it via: PLAY > CAMPAIGNS > "Prologue" or LEARN > BOOTCAMP > "Prologue". 7.6% of worldwide recruits have graduated from Bootcamp so far.

OPERATIONS

Let's hear it for another hidden hero in Arma 3's support network: Jervant Malakjan! Being a Web Developer in the Publishing division, he helps us with anything web-oriented. He is the reason we can share these SPAMREPs every week, he feeds the game's Launcher with its news, he maintains arma3.com, bistudio.com and more of our domains, and he supports all of our releases with special pages. Thanks for always accommodating our needs so quickly and expertly, Jervant!

LOGISTICS

Learning by example is still one of the more effective methods for modders. We'll keep trying to expand our range of samples in the Arma 3 Tools suite to facilitate that. You can find them in the Samples_F sub-folder. Recent additions to its Dev-Branch have been:

SITUATION

The third Steam Free Weekend for Arma 3 was another big success. We are both humbled and proud. You help us keep the game relevant as we're well into the second year of post-release support. Our gratitude to the community's server administrators, for whom the Free Weekends are especially stressful. We're sure all players appreciate your hard work to provide a place to play. To all players who've decided to stay with us after the trial ended, we bid you welcome to the Armaverse. The development team remains committed to making the game better for you. Besides continued work on stability and performance, we have big things in the works, such as the Expansion terrain and the 3D scenario editor.

INTELLIGENCE

Reporting in for an interview this time is Designer Nelson Duarte. The Q&A goes over the life of a playable content designer at Bohemia Interactive, before diving into End Game, on which Nelson is one of the primary developers. Read more about how the concept came to be, and what kind of gameplay it provides. The interview wraps up with insight into the (open) development of the mode, future plans, and a bit of casual trolling of Nelson's roots.

While you are playing "Hacker" achievement. Only added to the game in update 1.42, it has been unlocked by 0.2% of the global player-base at time of writing.

Teamwork is very important in this multiplayer mode. Both during the PvE and PvP stages, you can gain a tactical benefit by forming dynamic groups. Press 'U' to open the interface to find a group to join. Or create your own group, give it a name, invite others and promote a leader. We've provided a small range of official servers to play End Game on. You can also use an in-game server browser filter to locate sessions. Go to PLAY > MULTIPLAYER > FILTER, and then fill in "End Game" in the Mission field. Since we are still improving the mode, your feedback is welcome on our forums.

LOGISTICS

There has been a lot of interest in creating custom instances of End Game multiplayer. We've added a setup guide to the Community Wiki to explain the basics and offer some specific tips. In case you're looking to only add Revive to your scenario, take a look at how respawn templates are configured. With both pieces of documentation, do realize that we'll be continuing development and the implementation may change along the way. This applies especially to systems like Revive, which we consider scripted experimental versions of eventual tech.

Our very own CEO Marek Ĺ paněl informed the world about the availability of paper maps for Altis and Stratis (free worldwide shipping). If you own the Digital Deluxe Edition, you can find digital PDFs of these maps in your installation's Bonus folder. The printed versions look just like any real tourist destination's folded map - a great gift for any fan of Arma 3!

SITUATION

Update 1.44 has rolled off the presses and onto main branch. We thank you for your help with Release Candidate testing. Please allow a little time for all your favorite servers to update. It can take some time for the data to propagate through the entire Steam ecosystem world-wide. Until then, you may not be able to connect to all servers. If you are not seeing the game update itself, try restarting the Steam Client.

There isn't a lot to report on otherwise. We are still specifying our development road map for the rest of the year, and beyond. The various departments are planning their major tasks and assigning priorities. They are performing feasibility studies, doing analyses and building prototypes for the Expansion. It will be a while before we can share the results with you. When we do, we'll be more confident we can actually deliver what we have planned.

INTELLIGENCE

It's high time for another developer livestream ! Designer Nelson Duarte and Creative Director Jay Crowe are to be some of the special guests appearing to discuss End Game multiplayer. A prearranged roster of developers and community members will duke it out in a 'best of 3' battle. Join us on our official Twitch channel on Thursday May 7 at 18:30 UTC (20:30 Prague time). We'll try to also motivate a few team members to take your questions in the live chat. Please be nice to them! In all likelihood, a YouTube recording of the stream will be shared afterwards for those who cannot attend.

In a documentation on presenting your mod well in-game. Tools Commissar Julien Vida has followed up with a sample mod on Steam Workshop. After subscribing and downloading the mod, you can visit the mod's local folder for references and to be inspired for your own creations.

"Godly Creations" is the third achievement we're placing in the spotlights. It requires you to assume the role of Zeus and place a total of 200 objects. Zeus is free DLC that we introduced with update 1.16 back on April 10 2014. Its multiplayer framework lets one or more game masters curate the online experience for other players. Scenarios can be created from scratch and modified on-the-fly. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination, but with great power comes great responsibility. Being a good Zeus is not easy. It can, however, provide some of the most rewarding multiplayer experiences out there. You can get a first impression of Zeus via its introduction in PLAY > SHOWCASES.

You have since elevated the global unlock percentage to 3.0%. Remember that you don't need to place all objects in a single session; the counter is stored on Steam's persistent servers. You are also not limited to official scenarios, so you can use any custom Zeus-enabled scenario as well. The real challenge of course, is not just to spam simple objects, but to build meaningful compositions for your stories. A bit of a shortcut is to place preset compositions via the CREATE tree on the right (Groups > Empty).

OPERATIONS

We've decided to do a multi-phased roll-out for the improved BattlEye anti-cheat software. What does that mean? Update 1.44 has prepared the infrastructure. The Launcher has been trained to provide the easiest interface to enable, disable, update and start the BE Service (but it remains possible to use separately for advanced use cases). We'll not immediately enable the more effective protection. In order not to upset the live game too much, we'll do that a little later, after the infrastructure has been proven to be reliable. Please use this forums thread to post related feedback.

LOGISTICS

Beneath the watchful eyes of Art Lead David Zapletal, our artists have created a set of very useful PSD texture templates for the Marksmen DLC assets (weapons for now, vests soon). Find them in the Samples_F\MarksmenDLC_Textures folder of Arma 3 Tools. Become familiar with the rest of the tools changes in the latest TECHREP . Have fun creating re-skins for your mods!

One type of Dedicated Server crash is somehow able to evade capture by our programmers. The trouble is that it does not produce usable crash reports (they are empty or otherwise corrupted). We have been unable to reproduce the crash, and have not discovered a reproduction method or common factor between those servers affected. We feel it was probably introduced in update 1.42, and it may only occur for large player counts and after long server up-time. Special tests are being organized by Online Services Consultant David FoltĂ˝n. If you have any useful information, please share the specifics in this Feedback Tracker ticket.